NYC PREMIERE In 1979, teenager Mark DeFriest received a four-year prison sentence for stealing his own tools. After countless outrageous jailbreak attempts—many humorously recounted here through animated sequences—he’s still incarcerated and will be until 2084. Shortly after his confinement began, Mark’s mental competency was questioned, but the opinion of Dr. Robert Berland, a single dissenting […]
WORLD PREMIERE Following the devastation of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Yuki visits her estranged parents in Kasama, Japan, a rural artist community. Harboring resentment against them for abandoning her as a teenager in the East Village after a failed attempt to live as artists in New York City, Yuki presses her elderly parents for […]
NYC PREMIERE By now, the idea of Civil War re-enactment is familiar, but the subjects of Mike Attie and Meghan O’Hara’s intriguing film relive the battles of a far more surprising conflict: Vietnam. Drawing a mix of combat enthusiasts, Iraq War soldiers, actual Vietnam veterans, and even a former South Vietnamese Army officer, this band […]
2014 VIEWFINDERS COMPETITION WINNER NYC PREMIERE Cairo Drive expertly balances humor, frustration and a distinctive sense of fatalistic irony to offer a view of Egypt unseen in recent documentaries about the Arab Spring. Shot before, during and after the revolution, Sherief Elkatsha’s entertaining film explores Cairo from the street level through the perspectives of its […]
WORLD PREMIERE After Dan Rybicky and Aaron Wickenden meet octogenarian Peter Anton, they become fascinated by a series of elaborate autobiographical collage diaries that the eccentric outsider artist has created, stretching back decades. Becoming enmeshed in his life—as they later learn, like so many before them—the filmmakers help him mount a gallery exhibition for the […]
US PREMIERE Televangelist, multi-millionaire and leader of the religious right, Pat Robertson is a man on a mission. During an escalating refugee crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Robertson ran a media blitz on the Christian Broadcasting Network to raise money for his charity, Operation Blessing. Over the airwaves, he gave glowing reports of […]
2013 AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER WORLD PREMIERE Director Michael Kleiman follows Peruvian families living in remote regions as their children experience the One Laptop per Child program, gaining access to the Internet for the first time. Web considers both the benefits and complications that arise from digital connections. Alongside the poignant and sometimes humorous local stories, […]
NYC PREMIERE The remote Ozark town of Branson, MO has long been a popular tourist attraction, drawing 7.5 million visitors to attend its more than 100 family-oriented musical/ variety shows. But as the economic crisis takes its toll on the traditionally middle-class clientele of the “Live Music Capital of the World,” Branson’s way of life […]
NYC PREMIERE The residents of a dying Colorado mining town pin their hopes for economic resurgence on the promise of a new uranium mill—the first to be built in three decades—even as they continue to feel the dangerous effects of the last uranium boom. In the face of legal injunctions by environmental activists from a […]
US PREMIERE Director Sarah McCarthy (The Sound of Mumbai: A Musical) looks at the timely topic of Americans adopting Russian orphans—just prior to the controversial ban imposed by Vladimir Putin. Former Disney employees Claudio and Cheryl Diaz decide to adopt a girl and twin boys at once, but nothing can prepare them for what’s to […]